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two thoughts

It is completely gross out.The weathermen call this "wintery mix". I call it flying slop.

When you walk around my neighborhood in this sort of weather each corner is an obstacle course. The corners all flood, but all do it differently.  You need to create a strategy for crossing each corner. Some require you to walk up the block a bit to where the land might be just a bit higher. Other intersections require you to walk into traffic so you don't wade in water that is halfway up your knees. Some corners require a long jump.

It is one experience to do this walk on my own. It was quite another experience when I was pushing a stroller or walking with a short child ( and pushing a stroller).




When my oldest was in middle school or high school she was doing a project about the history of our neighborhood. One of the facts she discovered is the reason that our corners flood so badly in wet weather.

When the streets we laid out at the end of the 19th-century money was set aside to hire engineers to properly engineer the streets so that there would be proper drainage. That pot of money was just too tempting for the city politicians and it all got grafted away. I think about those pols every time I walk the neighborhood in nasty weather.

And this is my second thought. All of us who lived here on 9-11 remember the bright cloudless sky of that day. I also remember the day before. I was with all three kids. We had just done the pick up at PS75.  As we walked up the hill from West End Avenue, the drizzle had turned into a giant cloudburst.

We stood at this corner, the corner of Broadway and 96th streets waiting for the light to change. We were soaked, but not completely soaked.  My youngest was complaining. Then the crosstown bus drove through the puddle sending the massive puddle on top of us.

I asked the kids if they were soaked down to their underpants. They were.

I then declared that our situation was now perfect. We just couldn't get any wetter. My youngest stopped complaining. We laughed until we got home, took off all of our clothes, dried off and got dressed in dry clothes.

And those are my two thoughts.
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